Pros
- You get a variety of clientele to work with, so the monotony is at a minimum - Autonomy to implement solutions with clients as you deem fit, with little micromanagement - Found the pay and benefits very reasonable for a firm of NOW CFO's size - Opportunities for advancement are available with its leadership training curriculum which upon completion will make you eligible for promotions to director or partner - Depending on the clients you have and if you can work remotely, there is flexibility in when you work, provided your hours are billable. - A wide variety of fellow consultants with unique experiences who are working in offices in different cities that are great to work with and a convenient source to refer to when you have questions on a specific client issue or situation and need help in resolving it, they're never too busy to stop and help.
Cons
- Sometimes if the partner is having a bad day, the consultants will have one too, effecting the work environment and employee morale. - Needs to improve its brand identity, it badly conflicts with its name (more about this in "Advice to Management" below) - Lack of proper screening of clients - some of them are either too small for us to get steady work from and/or may not be able to afford to pay our fees on an ongoing basis as well as those who appear to display questionable business ethics. - Should reconsider the need to either reimburse mileage or otherwise find a way to bill clients/compensate consultants for excessive drive times to and from client sites, especially in major metropolitan cities (San Francisco, Houston, L.A., Phoenix, etc.). With some drive times taking 90 minutes or more just within the city, If consultants are driving, that is time lost that could be spent doing billable work, why should the consultant be penalized for being stuck in traffic? - No employee morale-building events - In my local NOW CFO office, fellow employees never got together for a staff dinner, holiday office party, random social outing, or even an out-of-office "CPE Day". We just worked to amass billable time for our clients and that was it. - My biggest "Con" was that partners tended to put the pursuit of dollars over the well-being of their staff, and that severely undermined my work morale.